Winegard FlatWave Amped Indoor Amplified HDTV Antenna (FL5500Y)

I was really hoping this would work better than it did. The transmitters for most stations where I live are right at the limit of this unit. It does pull the stations in, but you have to move it around in some ridiculous locations to hit the most channels. It's probably not going to set up in the window like you see it advertised. Mine wound up in the middle of the room to get the best reception. Of course, I do live in a challenging area with small mountains. Once it locked after a channel scan it held on to them pretty good. It couldn't find FOX at all..... but they're a pretty low budget station in my area.I think it would be exceptional in a metro area.....

I was very pleased to eventually get this hooked up to my hi-def tv, and find it pulled in about 45 channels over the air; several of which were hi def signals. (Several were home-shopping channels, and a few foreign-language channels. Once I deleted those from the lineup, I had about 38 remaining channels.)I live on the 7th floor of a 1970's-era condo building; I have southerly windows only (while it appears most of the tv towers in the DC area are north of me.) But, taping the antenna (which really is razor thin and light) to my south-facing windows (hidden behind light curtains) managed to pull all those channels anyway. This includes the main networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX) plus several public TV stations, a few "movie channels" like Bounce, Ion, MeTV, etc. and an all-weather radar station. More distant stations (I pick up one or two from around Baltimore, apparently) are more likely to have stutter/pixelation/poor reception. The main networks have been for the most part very strong and clear signals.The only problem I had was from my own tv, not the antenna -- my particular tv's Antenna-Input jack on the back is apparently a proprietary design to Samsung; the tv originally came with an "adapter accessory" (once I looked up the manual) that would fit the male end of this Flatwave antenna's coaxial RF cable's F-type connector (the threaded connector with a sharp wire/pin in the center) and then the other end of the accessory would fit into the Samsung input jack -- I guess I lost the accessory awhile ago; after 3 failed attempts at Radio Shack to try RCA, PAL, other connectors/adapters, I had to buy and ship a new one from Samsung (about $22). If your TV has a standard coax RF F-connector female input for Antenna In, you should be fine.I gave it a try for 4 days, and then promptly canceled my cable TV subscription, cutting out about $50/mo. With Netflix streaming and Amazon Prime Streaming, plus the main networks I pull in via this antenna now, I'm sufficiently stocked up for my TV viewing habits.

I was surprised at how large this "antenna" is - about 11 x 13. The set up instructions were not clear and it took us some time to figure out the connections. After we finally got it connected we had to keep readjusting the position. I thought it could just sit on top of the TV or hang on the back but it had to be attached to a wall with the command tape. Unfortunately the wall was not the best place for the channels we wanted to get so we had to compromise and get what we could using the only convenient location (if we had wanted to string the wires across the room we probably could have gotten the reception for the channel we wanted but we didn't want wires hanging from the ceiling.)To be fair, the tv and antenna are located in our lower level (basement) in a room we would use in the event of a storm. Since it was below ground the reception was probably limited. I would expect the antenna to work better in an upper level room. It works for our purposes: to keep track of storm/tornado status without having to pay for a cable box for a TV which is otherwise unused.

I got this after doing a lot of research online reading independent reviews. Several sites all rated it as among the best indoor amplified antennas. I had previously tried a directional antenna meant for an attic area with a separate amplifier and had gotten marginal results. Having "cut the cord" with my cable company about a month earlier, I was needing an antenna to get OTA local channels. Living about 30 miles away from most of stations meant I would most likely need an amplified product. Unfortunately, because of the way my 2-story house is built, there is no attic above the rooms where my 2 TVs are located. So an attic solution was out unless I wanted to tackle a long, arduous cable run. And our subdivision has strong rules against the more effective outside antennas. So, I located the antenna in our main living area which, at its highest point, has a 22 ft. ceiling. After experimenting with different heights, I found that higher was definitely better in being able to more clearly receive all the channels we were after. Three of those channels are relatively low-powered (<35 KHz) including the local CBS and PBS affiliates. So, I placed the antenna 16 ft. up with the white side facing out. I glued two velcro strips to the back side (the black side) of the antenna and mounted it against the sheetrock. It's hardly noticeable. And the reception is very good for most channels. Even the low-powered ones come in well most of the time. And it's supplying good signal to both TVs. The connection from the antenna, which has a 13 ft. cable, goes through a splitter and out through a 25 ft. RG-6 cable to one TV and a 50 ft. RG-6 cable to the other TV in an adjoining room.

If I had been able to put this antenna in just one, hard to reach spot it would have worked fairly well. It would only work in that one spot in the room though, facing a certain way, and it was across the opposite side from the TV. Would have required a lot of cable and attaching the cable either to the ceiling or the wall. I got about 18 channels in that spot, and I tried every inch of that room, but I wasn't going to have all of the mess crossing my ceiling. We only wanted it as backup to the satellite but I sent it back because it just wasn't worth the hassle.